Feds Consider New Antiterrorist Smart-Card Technology

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October 1, 2001 (Computerworld) -- Washington

The ability of the Sept. 11 terrorists to obtain forged identifications and airport credentials has prompted the federal government to consider new technologies for authenticating the identities of airline passengers and employees, aviation security personnel and federal employees with access to secure facilities.

The White House reiterated last week that it has no plans to introduce a national ID card. But officials from the Justice Department and other federal agencies, along with House minority leader Richard Gephart (D-Mo.), are clearly interested in ID card technology. Last week, they invited Dan Kehoe, president and CEO of Los Gatos, Calif.-based UltraCard Inc., to Washington to demonstrate his company's UltraCard smart-card technology.

Security officials are interested in the UltraCard because it has unique storage capabilities that overcome the limitations of current smart cards to store multiple sets of biometric data, such as fingerprints, high-resolution iris scans and voiceprints.

The UltraCard is capable of storing 20MB of data, whereas traditional smart cards store only 64KB. The lack of storage capacity has been the main stumbling block in the use of biometrics in smart cards, said Don Mann, chief technology officer at UltraCard.

"To do full security without false acceptance, you need more than one biometric," said Mann. "You need more than one fingerprint; [you need] a virus scan and a high level of encryption," he said. It takes 120KB to store a single FBI-level fingerprint, Mann said.

	Getting Carded How the UltraCard compares with a traditional smart card: UltraCard: 20MB of storage Smart card: 64KB of storage UltraCard: Applies hard disk drive technology to credit card-size smart card. Smart card: Cost and size increase along with capacity. UltraCard: $5 to $6 UltraCard Reader: $100

The idea of a national ID card is not without its proponents. Oracle Corp. CEO Larry Ellison has offered the government the software necessary to build the infrastructure for a national ID card system free of charge.

An Oracle spokesman confirmed Ellison's pledge but said the company had no details on the type of software Ellison had in mind.

Ellison's suggestion to build a central database has been one of the key areas of concern for members of Congress and privacy groups. The UltraCard, on the other hand, would avoid that problem by enabling authorities to conduct local authentication without having to transmit biometric data across the Internet "to a hackable database," said Mann. All of the biometrics and algorithms could be stored on the card.

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